When people think about publicity, they think about getting into the big publications and the major outlets; People Magazine, USAToday, The Today Show, Vogue, to name a few. What many authors don’t realize is that it is just as important, if not more, to build a strong online presence. This has lasting power. The more people start “buzzing” about you, your book and your expertise online, the more opportunities you are giving the “BIG” media to come and find you! ..Or at least have your publicist lead them to you.

For example, one of our authors, Megan Kelley Hall, has been traveling around (virtually, of course) to various blogs and websites talking about the role bullying has played in her YA novels, SISTERS OF MISERY and THE LOST SISTER. Both of her books are fiction, what is notoriously the hardest to promote because most news and entertainment outlets want a great non-fiction topic to build a show or article around. What we did with Hall was determine the best, most news-worthy angle that her stories provided. Because both of her books deal with the idea of mean girls, bullying and hazing (topics she researched painstakingly during the writing process) we used her expertise to build a “hook.” The result was that with every online outlet Hall wrote or was interviewed for, it always came back to bullying and the central theme of her novels.

When we were pitching Hall to the major outlets, one of my contacts over at Teen Vogue mentioned that she was working on a piece on bullying but that they typically didn’t cover fiction. Through our previous efforts with platform-building on websites and blogs, I was able to direct this editor to numerous sites where Hall has talked about the research behind the bullying aspect of her novels. Hall had set herself up as an expert and was therefore able to use the previously acquired online coverage to leverage a fantastic appearance in the cover story for the December/January issue of Teen Vogue.

Another example of how small things can lead to BIG exposure.